Category: Bike travel

A cross-country bike traveler from North Bend, Washington, is stuck in Missouri after his bicycle and gear was stolen earlier this week.

Ty Robinson, 29, arrived in Hannibal on Monday and stopped to look around because he had always enjoyed the writings of Mark Twain, who grew up there.

Twain famously wrote: “Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.” That's true for Robinson as well, except the punchline should be: “If you can hang onto it.”

Robinson and two friends started their journey from North Bend back in July. They were headed to Virginia Beach by bicycle …

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 If you're bicycling anywhere on the eastern half of the TransAmerica Bicycle Route over the next six weeks, keep an eye open for a cyclist wearing a yellow T-shirt that says “Tour de Frank: 1976 – 2010.”

Wave, give him a thumbs up, or even stop for a chat. That's Frank van Dijk, a fragment of bicycle touring history.

The 58-year-old Dutchman is finishing his Bikecentennial tour that he started 34 years ago.

Frank was one of thousands who took to the road in 1976 to cross the United States by bicycle to celebrate the nation's 200th anniversary. Frank set out with a group of 179 cyclists called “The Dutch Apples” who left the Pacific Coast to ride east to Yorktown, Virginia.

Unfortunately for Frank, an elderly motorist ran into him with her Buick ….

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A cyclist from the U.K. is riding across the U.S. on a bicycle with three goals in mind: To travel. To share. To inspire.

But Dominic Gill isn't making the journey alone. He's riding from the rear seat of a tandem bicycle that's outfitted so the captain sits in back and the stoker rides and pedals out front.

Gill's passengers are all people whose physical impairments would make it impossible for them to make the trip on their own.

Keith Rogers at the Las Vegas Review Journal writes about one of those passengers, Carlos Terrazas, 22, who has been blind since birth…..

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An anti-government uprising in his home country of Nepal convinced Pushkar Shah to ride his bicycle around the world to spread the message of peace.

Now, Shah plans to scale the slopes of Mount Everest to plant the flags of the 150 countries he visited on his 11-year journey.

Shah ended his 135,000-mile world tour ….

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The TransAmerica Bicycle Route's unforgettable Cookie Lady has been offering traveling cyclists a place to tank up their water bottles, restore their carbs and even spend the night for more than 30 years.

This summer, June Curry is cutting back on some of those activities. Although the Bike House will remain open during the day for touring bicyclists who want a look around, she'll no longer be offering overnight lodging there.

The Adventure Cycling Association blog says a good friend of June's recently told them:

“…the situation (not having cyclists stay at the bike house) may change in the future, but right now, June would prefer not to have overnight visitors ….

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Embarking on a Pan-American bicycle tour is by no means commonplace these days, but adventurers are undertaking it more frequently.

That wasn't the case in 1974, when 18-year-old Keith Jackson, at right, left the comforts of his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the rigors of an 18,000-mile bike journey from Alaska to the southernmost tip of Argentina.

Jackson was one of the first and one of the youngest. Recently, that path has become more well-traveled.

Just this past winter, Scotsman Mark Beaumont finished the bike trek, which he blogged about at Cycling the Americas. Shortly before that, three Americans accomplished the feat, reported at their blog Riding the Spine.

There is even a family of four ….

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Editor's note: Every spring a whole new crop of bicycling fans are champing at the bit to take their first bicycle tour. While most have already read the standard “Top 10 tips” of bicycle touring somewhere, here's my personal suggestions gleaned from hard-learned lessons.

This is a reprint of a post buried in the bowels of my blog from several years ago. Most pointers are still true today:

1. Keep clean, especially your most tender parts. Cycling shorts are a heated petri dish for bacteria. Even if you're camping at a spot without showers, find a water spigot or head into a restroom to give yourself a good cleaning down below. A small pimple or rash can become an infection to rival anything found in the trenches of World War I. We talked to a couple who had to stop their tour the previous year because of such an infection ….

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Willie Weir is a name I've associated with bicycle travel for many years, especially through his writings for Adventure Cyclist magazine.

When I moved to western Washington a few years ago, I was happily surprised to learn that the author, lecturer and winner of gold and bronze Lowell Thomas Awards for travel writing had his roots right here in Seattle.

I had about a thousand questions to ask him when we finally met at the Seattle Bicycle Expo this past weekend, but I boiled it down to two: What's your favorite place for bicycle touring, and where would you ride your bike if you only had a week? …..

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